How do you decide what's funny and what's not?
Joel Stein’s article in the TIME magazine, My Own Private India, has ruffled quite a few feathers. There have been a spate of posts by Indian-Americans criticizing the article as racist and offensive. The criticism ranges from well-worded to satirical (such as Kal Penn’s piece) to downright immature (targeting Joel Stein’s Jewish ethnicity). Several non-Indian-Americans have come out in their support, eager to flaunt their anti-racism.
Indians are no strangers to humor based on ethnicity or nationality. Sardarji jokes and jokes about Indians outsmarting dumb Americans continue to be circulated widely among the Indians and the Indian diaspora. Why did the Indian-Americans react so strongly to Stein’s article? Was it just because the joke is on them now? Or is it because the use of the term “dotheads” reminded them of the Dotbusters? Or was there another reason?
Here’s my theory: the Indian-Americans’ reaction to Stein’s article is a reflection of their latent fear that their status as a successful minority community might lead to a backlash someday. They feel it reflects the average American’s perception of the immigrants as a threat to the propsperity of those who arrived earlier.
Ethnic humor is often endearing and entertaining, especially when made by someone belonging to that ethnic group. However, sometimes you don’t know where to draw the line, and the things may go out of hand. The Sikhs know this quite well. Their willingness and ability to poke sheer fun at themselves created an entire genre of jokes: the ubiquitous Sardarji jokes. My ancestors lived in Lahore before moving to Delhi during the Partition of 1947, and consequently my paternal family had ties with many Sikhs. A lot of them cracked Sardarji jokes and the non-Sikhs would often join them: this was not considered offensive at all. But, in the aftermath of Khalistan movement, things were not funny anymore. The Sardarji jokes were often used for harassing the enterprising Sikhs, whose success had created a sense of insecurity among the others. I remember, when I was around 14-year old or so, I once went camping in Mahabaleshwar, where two fellow campers were discussing how stupid Sardars are. I wasn’t sure whether they were serious or just kidding, but being brought up in a family where Sardars are seen as hardworking and honest people, I didn’t feel very comfortable about the conversation. So, I intervened and told them that the Sardars were very intelligent and enterprising people. The young campers, in all seriousness, countered my claim by narrating an incident about two eight-year old Sikh kids who didn’t know all the rules of playing cricket.
Many Sikhs today feel that tasteless Sardarji jokes have harmed the self-esteem of their kids, who often face ridicule in school or on the playground. The Indian-Americans want to avoid such a situation. Stein might have intended to be humorous, but if they allow one such satirical article to go uncriticized today, it might encourage a hundred such articles in the future. And then, it won’t be funny anymore. There are a lot of nutjobs out there in America, who will bring the word “dothead” back in fashion after reading these articles. If they allow Stein’s lines (“…even-less-bright cousins, and we started to understand why India is so damn poor”) to go unchallenged, their kids might become objects of ridicule in the schools tomorrow, stereotyped as not-so-bright immigrants.
The status of Indian-Americans today is reminiscent of the status of the Sikhs, the Jews and several other minority communities at their pinnacle. Both the Jews and the Sikhs gained prominence as successful minorities. However, in the period following their success, they allowed strong negative stereotypes to be associated with them. These stereotypes later came in handy for the Jew-bashers and the 1984 rioters. Indian-Americans don’t want strong negative stereotypes to be built around them. So, they are actively opposed to even the slightest negative take on their community, even if it’s supposed to be humorous. When an Indian-American writes an article on “How To Date A White Bitch”, it’s all right. But, imagine the furore that will be caused if a White author wrote an article titled “How To Date An Indian-American Bitch”.
Are you one of those who are appalled because I found Joel Stein's article (somewhat) funny?
I know many readers would be appalled at this, but I actually found (at least some parts of) Joel Stein’s article funny. I also found his apology funny (“Also stupidly assumed their emails would follow that Gandhi non-violence thing.”) Stein seems to have tried mellowing down the perceived anti-Indian rhetoric by using some self-deprecatory humor in his article (e.g. “There is an entire generation of white children in Edison who have nowhere to learn crime.”) I don’t think he wrote like a racist — he was just a little insensitive. Sometimes, you’ve to be a little more considerate about the audience, the context and the times you’re living in. Stein wasn’t considerate enough.
It’s hard to draw a clear line between when we should laugh at ourselves thinking “it’s just a joke!”, and when we should get concerned about others making fun of us. Fifty years down the line, we might be feeling stupid about the knee-jerk overreaction to the Stein’s article or we might be reading a book about how the article was one of the early signs of vehement racism that led to the widespread violence against the Indian-Americans.
